Research: moving forward in the field

The UC Davis Department of Emergency Medicine has served the medical center and surrounding community since 1973. Prior to 1990, the Department's primary focus was education of medical students/residents and patient care. However, over the past eighteen years the Department of Emergency Medicine has increasingly contributed to the growing body of medical research in the field of emergency medicine.

Recent grants that have been awarded to the Department of Emergency Medicine include awards of $1.8 million for a pediatric emergency medicine network and $1.6 million for pediatric head injury research. Another $5 million worth of grants are pending review.

As the number of publications has increased, so has the breadth of research topics. This sharp increase in the number of publications clearly illustrates the intensifying faculty interest in conducting research. To ensure future departmental research growth Dr. Nathan Kuppermann was appointed research director in 1997 and became chair of the Department in 2006. Dr. Deborah Diercks now serves as Research Director for the Department.

The UC Davis Department of Emergency Medicine is proud to offer a K12 reseach training prorgram funded by the National Heart, Lung, Blood Institute (NHLBI). This program provides promising individuals with 2-3 years of dedicated, mentored clinical research training. The goal is to foster independent careers in emergency medicine or pediatric emergency medicine research.

Education Programs

The UC Davis Department of Emergency Medicine offers a two-year Emergency Medicine Research Fellowship. The program combines training in clinical emergency medicine research with graduate level training at UC Davis leading to either a Masters of Science in Clinical Epidemiology or Masters in Public Health.

The Department of Emergency Medicine can always use additional help with its research projects. If you are interested in learning more about emergency medicine research opportunities for undergraduate students, medical students, or residents, please contact the the research director for more information. Undergraduates can learn more about our unique Emergency Medicine Research Assistant Program (EMRAP)here.

The emergency department has multiple research projects and many areas of research interests. Current research projects include:

General emergency medicine

Computational modeling of emergency services

Derivation and validation of elbow x-ray rules

Radiation exposure in the ED from portable films

NEAR: a multi-center observational study of all emergency department intubations

Video-assisted laryngoscopy in emergencies

Impact of invasive source control in sepsis patients

Adult trauma

Association between seat belt use and traumatic brain injury in side impact motor vehicle collisions

Association between helmet type and severity of injury in motorcycle collisions

Pediatric trauma

Development of a clinical decision instrument for abdominal evaluation in children with blunt torso trauma